Laboratory analysis is a cumbersome process. Acquisition of chemical and biochemical information requires expensive equipment, specialized labs and highly trained personnel. For this reason, laboratory testing is done in only a fraction of circumstances where acquisition of chemical information would be useful. A large proportion of testing in both research and clinical situations is done with crude manual methods that are characterized by high labor costs, high reagent consumption, long turnaround times, relative imprecision and poor reproducibility. The practice of techniques such as electrophoresis that are in widespread use in biology and medical laboratories have not changed significantly in thirty years.
Operations that are performed in typical laboratory processes include specimen preparation, chemical/biochemical conversions, sample fractionation, signal detection and data processing. To accomplish these tasks, liquids are often measured and dispensed with volumetric accuracy, mixed together, and subjected to one or several different physical or chemical environments that accomplish conversion or fractionation. In research, diagnostic, or development situations, these operations are carried out on a macroscopic scale using fluid volumes in the range of a few microliters to several liters at a time. Individual operations are performed in series, often using different specialized equipment and instruments for separate steps in the process. Complications, difficulty and expense are often the result of operations involving multiple laboratory processing steps.
Many workers have attempted to solve these problems by creating integrated laboratory systems. Conventional robotic devices have been adapted to perform pipetting, specimen handling, solution mixing, as well as some fractionation and detection operations. However, these devices are highly complicated, very expensive and their operation requires so much training that their use has been restricted to a relatively small number of research and development programs. More successful have been automated clinical diagnostic systems for rapidly and inexpensively performing a small number of applications such as clinical chemistry tests for blood levels of glucose, electrolytes and gases. Unfortunately due to their complexity, large size and great cost, such equipment, is limited in its application to a small number of diagnostic circumstances.
The desirability of exploiting the advantages of integrated systems in a broader context of laboratory applications has led to proposals that such systems be miniaturized. In the 1980's, considerable research and development effort was put into an exploration of the concept of biosensors with the hope they might fill the need. Such devices make use of selective chemical systems or biomolecules that are coupled to new methods of detection such as electrochemistry and optics to transduce chemical signals to electrical ones that can be interpreted by computers and other signal processing units. Unfortunately, biosensors have been a commercial disappointment. Fewer than 20 commercialized products were available in 1993, accounting for revenues in the U.S. of less than $100 million. Most observers agree that this failure is primarily technological rather than reflecting a misinterpretation of market potential. In fact, many situations such as massive screening for new drugs, highly parallel genetic research and testing, micro-chemistry to minimize costly reagent consumption and waste generation, and bedside or doctor's office diagnostics would greatly benefit from miniature integrated laboratory systems.
In the early 1990's, people began to discuss the possibility of creating miniature versions of conventional technology. Andreas Manz was one of the first to articulate the idea in the scientific press. Calling them "miniaturized total analysis systems," or ".mu.-TAS," he predicted that it would be possible to integrate into single units microscopic versions of the various elements necessary to process chemical or biochemical samples, thereby achieving automated experimentation. Since that time, miniature components have appeared, particularly molecular separation methods and microvalves. However, attempts to combine these systems into completely integrated systems have not met with success. This is primarily because precise manipulation of tiny fluid volumes in extremely narrow channels has proven to be a difficult technological hurdle.
One prominent field susceptible to miniaturization is capillary electrophoresis. Capillary electrophoresis has become a popular technique for separating charged molecular species in solution. The technique is performed in small capillary tubes to reduce band broadening effects due to thermal convection and hence improve resolving power. The small tubes imply that minute volumes of materials, on the order of nanoliters, must be handled to inject the sample into the separation capillary tube.
Current techniques for injection include electromigration and siphoning of sample from a container into a continuous separation tube. Both of these techniques suffer from relatively poor reproducibility, and electromigration additionally suffers from electrophoretic mobility-based bias. For both sampling techniques the input end of the analysis capillary tube must be transferred from a buffer reservoir to a reservoir holding the sample. Thus, a mechanical manipulation is involved. For the siphoning injection, the sample reservoir is raised above the buffer reservoir holding the exit end of the capillary for a fixed length of time.
An electromigration injection is effected by applying an appropriately polarized electrical potential across the capillary tube for a given duration while the entrance end of the capillary is in the sample reservoir. This can lead to sampling bias because a disproportionately larger quantity of the species with higher electrophoretic mobilities migrate into the tube. The capillary is removed from the sample reservoir and replaced into the entrance buffer reservoir after the injection duration for both techniques.
A continuing need exists for methods and apparatuses which lead to improved electrophoretic resolution and improved injection stability.